Tough Week

We had alot going on this week.  Thankfully Patric was here to help with it all.  Unfortunately we spent half of the week not talking much because of an argument and I really hated this because I knew I would need him for the deposition--I would need him to be there for me when I was weak and stumbling.  And he was.  We talked through our "spat" and got "us" fixed again....just in time.

I don't want to get into the deposition very much other than to "vent" about the whole purpose of this lawsuit from our perspective versus anyone else's.  Like the attorneys, for example.  I had met a few attorneys in our pursuit to find one that would represent us and those experiences were not pleasant, mostly given the circumstances.  One of the attorneys was completely heartless when he spoke to me and finally told me he couldn't represent me because he didn't think we could prove negligence.....all the while his wife was having a baby any day.  Ouch.  The attorney that we did chose is very good and friendly, respectful of our sensitivity to the topic and his firm seems very nice whenever I speak with them.  However, when I went to the deposition, I quickly learned the business of this lawsuit.  And it started when our attorney was telling me the "important" points in our case.  And when I told her things that led up to that or details that surrounding these points, she said "but none of that matters, stay focused" and I just looked at Patric with tears welling up and said "but it all matters, every second of every bit of this matters".  I can't understand it, but I start to see it for what it is...

There was no human factor to anyone but me while I was in that room.  This is a job for them and when the day is done, they go home to their kids and my dead baby means nothing to them.  I don't know why I would expect that--this is a job after all.  To me and Patric, however, this is about our baby boy and we go home at the end of the day, we only get to see his picture....and hope and pray we said the right things to the attorneys that will allow us to live proudly and with the same dignity we had before we walked into that deposition.  And if the cards are played right, we will get the satisfaction of knowing that what this doctor did to us will not go unnoticed and will not be allowed to do the same thing to anyone else.  But this is a game.  And while our stakes are our dignity and grace and peace, the stakes of the attorney are the money of the insurance companies.  And we are merely pawns in that game.  They never knew my son.  I don't think they have even seen pictures of him.  They don't want to, though.  They don't want to make this job of theirs "human" when it involves a death or loss.  That would be too painful.  Too real.  To them it remains a job, a profession with an end in sight.  Something we will never be satisfied with....the end to this story.

Growing up, my dad was a volunteer fireman for our community and I remember him going through weeks and weeks (or it could have been months and months, I don't know) of schooling to be an EMT, too.  There was a siren in town that would sound off in code (one siren meant something, two sirens meant something different and so on) in our town and he would rush  to the town firestation and prepare to go out on the call, whatever it was--a fire, a car accident, a farming accident or whatever.  Being a small community, a lot of the time he knew the people who's call he was going to.  One day he went out on a call and it was a 5th grade classmate of mine's house.  Dad arrived at the scene with the ambulance to find blood everywhere in the house and a young boy on the floor, lying there lifeless, dead of a shotgun wound...by accident with his cousin, also in my class.    Since there were only 13 kids in my class, we knew him well.  I remember my dad coming home from that call and taking me in his bedroom and telling me what happened--that my classmate had died.  Dad was very upset, I could tell.  And that was the last call he went on in the ambulance.  He quit that job (it was a volunteer job) because it hit too close to home to him.  The human factor of his job when he saw the trauma of a kid the same age as his own was too much to handle and he couldn't remove this from his mind anymore.  Unlike the attorney's. I wonder if there are any attorney's that represent malpractice cases that have lost a baby due to the negligence of a doctor.  And I wonder if that experience makes them better attorney's when representing someone who has gone through what they have.  It's kind of like talking to a nurse during your labor and delivery of your rainbow baby and finding out she, too, lost a baby and she, too, had a rainbow.  You know she knows exactly how you feel.  As her patient, that comforts me.   WIthout her even having to say a word.  I know she knows.  But the legal system doesn't require such.  Apparently you don't have to be human, though it would be nice.  It might make this process more than just a transaction.

So hard....but so necessary

I am still in the process of litigation with the hospital and mostly the doctor who delivered Chase.  The depositions have been completed and so things are moving forward.  My attorney said I did not have to be and he might not want me at the depositions, but that I would have full access to all of the transcripts.  Knowing that they were complete, I called and asked to see Dr. Harkins' and they put it right in the mail to me.

Patric read it first and gave me his opinion or his perception of the transcript.  From this, I thought that I was going to be really confused after I read it.  I thought I would see the doctor as remorseful and regretful and as confused as I was with what happened.  It was all what I wanted to hear.  What I did not get after the trauma.  An honest explanation of what happened to me and to my baby boy....from a man who was not only my doctor and caretaker, but also my friend.  I felt so abandoned after Chase's death by him....in every sense of the word.  I was so lost.  So confused.  So hurt.  And so mad.  And I thought all of this had finally come out in his deposition--it was his one last chance to explain to me what happened and say what he wanted to say....with the help of my attorney and his.  

So the deposition came in the mail.  Patric read it and told me about it.  Then he gave it to me to read.  But I couldn't.  I wanted the time to be right.  I wanted to not be distracted, not be interrupted, but to read the whole thing as if I was in the room listening.  So it sat here on my desk for more than a week.  Waiting for the right time, when there is no right time for something like this.

100 pages of deposition...and it was the quickest read ever.  Because even when I get the opportunity to relive that horrible day and try to figure out how everything got so screwed up, it all goes even faster.  I couldn't get through it fast enough.  And I see how stupid this doctor is.  How much MORE stupid he is than what I ever thought.  His deposition is so completely incriminating to me it's insane.  And now I can't wait to talk to my lawyer tomorrow.  Because half the time I read the documents from my attorney, my interpretation is so far off base from what they are saying (in all that legal jargon), that I think it's white when actually it's black and it's on our side.  But what I read in that deposition was exactly what I thought the entire time.  The arrogance, the incompetency.  All of it.  When I read it, I can hear his tone of voice, his innuendoes, his condescending attitude, his duplicity.  And its rough.  It's hard to read.  But I've needed to hear this for so long.  And for me, it's therapeutic.  Reading his interpretation, even if it is for the attorneys, of the surgery that he did on me was healing.  Hearing the horror even from his side.....something I that at one point I doubted that he even felt.

So I read this deposition with my baby boy in my arms.  My healthy, alive, sleeping baby boy.  And my heart aches for what should have been, at the same time that it melts for what is.  I am so blessed with Owen.  I truly believe he has his brother in him.  Side note:  I took him to the doctor because I thought he had an earache (duh, just overreacted to teething, oh well).  This was a new doctor who does not know anything about us, not medically or anything.  He took one look at Owen and asked how old he was and said, "oh, he looks so much older.  Not in a bad way, just wise beyond his years sort of, you know?"  I thought, man, doctor, if you only knew.  My little boy is so much more than what you see.  If only you knew....